The Breakfast Incident
by KaleidescopeCat
Summary: Malcolm tries to make Hoshi breakfast. Explosions ensue. Hoshi gets her revenge. Malcolm gets away with it.


All characters are the property of Paramount. Now, if I owned them, would I be posting here when I could be making money off of them?  
  
THE BREAKFAST INCIDENT  
  
********************  
  
BOOM!!!  
  
"It'll be a cold day in hell that I ever let you make me breakfast again!" cried Hoshi, storming out of the Mess Hall.  
  
Malcolm Reed dashed out of the kitchen after her, an apron twisted around his waist and a spatula in his hand. "Hoshi, wait!" he cried, and then stopped dead when the twenty-seven people scattered among the tables all stared at him.  
  
From beneath a slightly scorched covering of flour dust, something sticky and orange, and cooked egg, the armory officer went beet-red and skittered- yes, skittered, there was no other possible way to describe the movement- back into the kitchen, leaving a trail of powdery white behind him.  
  
Trip Tucker and Travis Mayweather glanced at each other and, as one, made a beeline for the kitchen door. "Hey, Malcolm! What happened?" said Trip as the door slid open. Travis's eyes widened as they took in the utter devastation of the kitchen.  
  
Flour covered everything. A burned-black hotplate sat on the counter, which was scorched black around it for about two feet. On top of the scorch marks, and on everything that wasn't covered in flour, was a fluffy cloud of fire-extinguishing foam. Eggshells littered the floor, and what looked suspiciously like pancake batter and orange juice dripped from the ceiling. Amidst all this mess Travis and Trip didn't see Malcolm at first; since he was covered in all of the same mess as the rest of the kitchen, he was excellently camouflaged.  
  
They tracked him down, though, because he kept moaning, "I've done it, I've really done it now... She'll never talk to me again! Oh, bloody hell, I've done it this time..." He sat next to the fridge with his head buried in his hands, rocking back in forth.  
  
"Malcolm?" asked Trip, squatting down next to his friend. He tried to brush some of the flour out of the armory officer's hair, tried harder, and decided it was a lost cause. "What happened?"  
  
Malcolm took his head out of his hands and looked up at them. Beside him, Trip heard Travis snicker, then hastily turn it into a cough when the lieutenant glared at him. "Well, I thought I'd make Hoshi breakfast. Pancakes and eggs and orange juice, all the trimmings. So we bribed Chef into letting us use the kitchen and came down here early this morning.  
  
"First, I opened the flour. But it wasn't a normal bag of flour. The seal was so tight, I had to rip it to get it open, and of course it exploded all over everything, so the air was full of it." Malcolm shot a double-barreled glare at Travis, who was desperately trying to suppress his laughter.  
  
"Then the floor was kind of slippery because of the flour, so when I was trying to get the eggs, I slid and tossed a whole packet of eggs into the air and one landed on Hoshi's head." Travis snorted, looked at Malcolm, and hurriedly started to choke. Trip, desperately trying not laugh himself, pounded the ensign on the back until he stopped. Malcolm, looking much less than amused, gave them a sour look and went on.  
  
"Anyway, she wanted to leave right about then, so I tried to convince her to stay and said I'd get her a drink of orange juice, real orange juice from Earth that I'd been saving." Malcolm shook his head sadly. "Well, apparently orange juice ferments if you keep it too long. I unscrewed the cap and boom! Orange juice everywhere. And right in Hoshi's face, too."  
  
Travis's cheeks puffed out and his face started to turn red. Trip could see him shaking with laughter.  
  
"I convinced her to stay one more time. I said that even I couldn't mess up pancakes."  
  
"Pancakes? Pancakes are damn hard to get right, Malcolm. What were you thinking?" said Trip, deciding to throw caution to the winds and grinning ear-to-ear.  
  
Malcolm's face went even redder under the flour. "Well, theflourintheairignited..." he mumbled.  
  
"What was that?"  
  
"The flour in the air ignited when I turned on the hotplate," said Malcolm, gritting his teeth. "And the hotplate suffered the consequences, as you can see. A fireball three feet high engulfed it. Hoshi grabbed the fire extinguisher and put it out. Then she started yelling about how I blew up her hotplate."  
  
"And that's when she stormed out?" asked Travis.  
  
"Er... no, she stormed out when I said that it was a pity the hotplate didn't make much of an explosion," said Malcolm. "She thought I blew it up on purpose!"  
  
Neither Trip nor Travis could hold it in anymore. They collapsed on the floor, rolling around in the eggshells, gasping with laughter. "Not...much...of...an...explosion!" hooted Trip, wiping his eyes. "Hahaha!"  
  
"It's not funny! She'll never talk to me again! Honestly, I didn't mean to make everything explode!" He glared at Travis and Trip and then leapt for them, growling. "Stop that laughing!" They were too weak to fight back; still laughing, they batted Malcolm's punches away and kept on giggling.  
  
"Malcolm?" said Hoshi sweetly from the doorway. All three men stopped cold and stared up at her. "I just wanted to let you know that it was really sweet to try and make me breakfast. Even if you can't cook and you blew up my hotplate. Why don't you come to my quarters later?"  
  
Malcolm goggled at her. "Er, yes, of course!"  
  
"See you later, Malcolm!" Hoshi said and skipped away. Travis and Trip started to hoot and elbow the blushing Malcolm when she poked her head back around the doorway.  
  
"Oh, by the way, Malcolm, Chef's coming up in a few minutes. He said he hopes you took good care of his kitchen! Ta ta!"  
  
The look of horror on Malcolm's face was just enough to set them off again. Trip and Travis clutched their sides and rolled with laughter. They didn't notice Malcolm get up and take off at a dead run until Chef's outraged voice echoed through the kitchen.  
  
"WHAT HAPPENED TO MY KITCHEN?"  
  
Out in the corridor, Malcolm smirked and ran for the showers.  
  
"Laugh at me, will you!" he snickered as the voices of Trip and Travis echoed through the hall, desperately trying to explain exactly why Chef shouldn't shove them out of the nearest airlock with a hotplate cord wrapped around their necks.  
  
**********************  
  
Except for dropping the eggs, everything in this story has happened to me. Yes, orange juice ferments and explodes. Yes, flour can explode when you turn on a hotplate if there's enough of it in the air. (Try explaining that one to your mother.) Things have a habit of exploding on me without warning, and I was reminiscing about them earlier since a can of Pepsi decided to explode on me...  
  
Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! 


End file.
